Beyond the End of Whatever

So I seem to have developed this addiction to Dream Theater in the past few weeks. I've always liked them, but more in a "oh, Dream Theater are playing, cool... will listen happily." That has turned into "what the hell is that playing? I need some Dream Theater!" No kidding. In fact, I'm listening to some Dream Theater while writing this...

While in the subject of music, I'd like to know what you think about neo-classical progressive metal... I like it just because of the genre-name! Okay, I also like how it sounds, but I thought that was an amazing name... something to just slip casually into a conversation: "yeah, I know, it's really a shame, but you know what they say: 'what doesn't kill you leaves a permanent scar'... oh, I was listening to some neo-classical progressive metal the other day and..." I've got to try it out sometime.

By the way, what's the point of walking your dog if you're going to be doing it on a bicycle? I think that's one of the most retarded things I've ever seen... yes, let's walk the dog, but I'm too bloody lazy to walk myself so I'm going to ride a bicycle... absolute retards!

And just to cap things off, the other day I saw this bloke on the Metro station who approached the ticket machine, took off his earphones, selected his ticket, paid, got his ticket and then put his earphones back on. Can somebody please explain that to me? Was the music really that distracting? Unless it was some bubblegum pop song naming all the different stages on the Metro line over and over I think it was a stupid thing to do.

Ideas

So yesterday I got inspected twice in the Metro. And both times there were at least two people who got caught without a ticket. That just confirmed what I always knew: it's more profitable to have random inspections than to have a proper ticket-eating system.

For you bastards who don't live in Newcastle, our Metro (haha, "our") works by the honour system... sort of. You can board a Metro wagon without a ticket (as there are no ticket-eating machines beforehand impeding your entry). However, from time to time there'll be inspectors around to check your ticket, and if you don't have a valid ticket (or if you don't have a ticket at all) then you will be fined 20 quid.

So yes, what I was getting at is that if they catch two people without tickets during each inspection (and you can assume that there will be at least 2 per day) then they're probably making more money than if everyone was to buy a ticket. Look at it this way: most of the elderly people have their passes, a lot of the students have their passes and those people who commute to work every morning at 8:30 in the bloody morning have their passes. So the only people that will get caught are those one-off users... and they get charged the fare of at least 6 tickets. Good stuff.

In other thoughts, I just came up with a brilliant idea. Newcastle is perhaps the city with the most flyers per square inch. Annoying as hell, it is. And I bet I'm not the only one who's sick of rejecting flyers or taking them and then throwing them away in the nearest rubbish bin. So I was walking through Northumberland Street with a cara de cañon (to avoid the flyers... works occasionally) and I figured I could put a sign on my cap that says "unless you're handing out cash, bugger off". Sounds like a great idea to me!